Monday, August 31, 2009

The Unified CPN (Maoist) has formed 18 departments resembling the ministries of the government.

A meeting of the party’s Joint National People’s Movement Committee on Sunday formed the departments. Many of the departments are coordinated by party leaders who were ministers in related ministries in the Maoist-led government.

Dr Baburam Bhattarai, who was the finance minister in the previous government, is the coordinator of the Planning and Finance Department.

WPRM (Britain) Note: In the current situation, in which international support for the Nepalese revolution has waned considerably since 2006, members of WPRM (Britain and Ireland) are in Nepal to talk with leaders and masses to try to better understand the contradictions in Nepalese society and how the UCPN(M) is providing leadership in making revolution. We believe constructive criticism should be made on the platform of internationalist support, especially given the ongoing threat from US imperialist and Indian expansionist intervention. Here is the first of various interviews and articles we hope to publish.WPRM:

Can you introduce yourself please?

Com. Binod: My name is Comrade Binod. I am a Central Committee member and secretary of the state council for Mahakali state, which comprises seven districts in the far west of Nepal.

WPRM: Can you tell us about the recent Central Committee meeting and its implications for the coming weeks and months?

Com. Binod: In the life of the party, this Central Committee meeting has been unusual from the point of view of ideology and debate. We have received an opportunity, and we are proud that this meeting has been very unusual because it has taken place amid the deep curiosity of the proletariat in Nepal as well as the world over. This curiosity is positive. At the same time, the imperialists and reactionaries also have an expectation. Amid this we have carried out a great meeting, and made decisions which have made us proud to talk about this meeting.

WPRM: And what are these decisions?

Com. Binod: At this moment when there is no experience of revolution in the 21st century, when there is no advanced proletarian revolutionary movement in the world, when this country is encircled and governed by Indian expansionism, at this moment against imperialism and expansionism, we have come to the decision that we have to accomplish insurrection. This is the important outcome of this meeting.

WPRM: So insurrection can be carried out in this situation?

Com. Binod: Certainly there is a negative situation; an unfavourable situation for revolutionaries. But there is no other mightier force than the people, and the Nepalese people are so mighty. Because of this, these people can bring us success. We have the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM) and we have a good and clear organisational setup, we have a team of leaders who want to fight, we have a class, a nation and a region which has been heavily suppressed. We have the commitment to win victory, the commitment to synthesise our understanding to a new height. Certainly there are serious obstacles put in front of the Nepali people by the Americans, but we have commitment, courage and the confidence to overcome those obstacles. What we see now within the UML, a revisionist party, is that their cadres have lost confidence with their leaders and their line. At the same time within Nepali Congress, a reactionary party, many cadres have also lost confidence with their leaders and their line. The monarchists have already lost their leadership and also the Terai nationalist forces have seen their leadership divided.We have a glorious history. You are British, and we have a glorious history of Ghorkali forces that defeated the British Army in many places. As descendants of that, our people are equipped with the weapons of MLM and the blood that is flowing in Nepal is now working for the purpose of socialism and communism. When we initiated the People’s War we were only 70 or 75 people. Even at that time we had the courage and confidence that we could conquer the world, that the revolutionary forces, the proletariat, could conquer the world. We had some fear about whether our party was going to be destroyed, or whether, like UML, it would become a revisionist party, whether it would vacillate on the revolutionary path. But through the process of great debate we have come to a higher level of understanding and we see that the victory of the proletariat is inevitable. We have a deep feeling that today no-one can make this party a reactionary or vacillating party. We are not only capable and experienced in leading People’s War but also in leading line struggle and taking the party to a higher level of debate. That has been proved in this meeting.

WPRM: How does the UCPN(M) feel about the current UML led coalition government?

Com. Binod: Our senior leader Baburam Bhattarai said that the Nepali people have given the responsibility of being a driver to the Maoists, as a conductor to the Nepali Congress and as a caretaker to the UML. But now the caretaker has taken the place of the driver and the driver is in place of the caretaker. In Nepalese tradition there is a fable about Dakchyaprajapati, who has the body of a human being and the head of a goat, which is set in a wrong direction, pointing backwards. This government is like that. Objectively we understand this government like that, but politically this government is designed by Nepali Congress. In the objective reality of Nepal, this government has been constructed in order to destroy the Nepali revolution, the UCPN(M) and the aspirations of the Nepali people. But this government is like a scarecrow. In the beginning the birds think this might be a man. Then when the bird realises this is not a man then it sits on the head of the scarecrow. At the moment this government is like a scarecrow. The Nepali people understand that it is set up by Indian expansionism and they are not afraid of this. So it is not so important to talk about this government, but as far as MK Nepal (the PM) is concerned, he has time and again over the last few years prepared his trousers and his daura-suruwal (a type of Nepali dress). He has been prepared many times but had never before had this opportunity. Now he has got his opportunity. But this time there is a big possibility that his chair will fall down before his clothes get dirty.

WPRM: Now Prachanda is talking about a new government being formed, how will this come about?

Com. Binod: This new government will assure civilian supremacy and national sovereignty, giving immediate relief to the people and with the purpose of insurrection. We have carried out many preparations in order to convince the international community that it is necessary to have power, in order to convince Nepalese society this government will be formed. Certainly, this government will be formed to organise insurrection, having convinced the international community that we want a new society, and to convince the revolutionary forces that we want to make revolution, to convince the people that we are going towards a new society, to convince anti-imperialist and anti-expansionist forces that we are taking this society forwards.

WPRM: How exactly will this new government come into being?

Com. Binod: The main basis is the Nepalese people. It will come about through the struggle of the Nepalese people, through strong intervention against the parliament and the organisation of a United Front amongst the nationalist and democratic forces within parliament and involving all sections of people and civil society. We understand that one section of UML is not happy with this government. The main section of the leadership is also not happy with this government. The Madhesi party has split and the Madhesi people are also not happy with this government. Even the honest people within Nepali Congress believe that without the Maoists the new constitution cannot be written. The people who are in favour of civilian supremacy and national sovereignty are also not happy with this government. The majority within this parliament agrees on the question that the step of the president (to overrule then-PM Prachanda’s decision to sack General Katuwal) is unconstitutional and unjust. These parliamentary forces are afraid even to debate this issue, this motion on the step of the president. Therefore this government is defunct because the practice has been shown that the parties are split and the parliamentary members are protesting. This kind of government cannot be accepted for a long time. It is defunct and is losing morality, confidence and honesty. It is set up against the people and so cannot sustain itself for long time.

WPRM: The deadline for writing the constitution is in nine months, is it possible to write it in time and what will happen if it is not?

Com. Binod: The constitution would certainly have been written if there was no struggle between opposite classes. But this struggle is happening as a political struggle. The other classes would like to write a constitution according to their class interests, we would like to write a constitution according to our class interests. The possibility of the constitution being written is low. At that time there is the possibility that a new class situation might emerge. We are taking the issue very seriously in order to meet the challenges that might come up in those conditions. In this situation we are trying to organise the masses for rebellion, through insurrection of the masses. The reactionaries didn’t want Constituent Assembly elections, but on the backs of the masses they were obliged to hold them. They didn’t want a republic, but on the back of the people the republic was established. Those elements who once put a bounty on our heads and propagated that we are terrorists have now been forced to recognise us as a political party because of the force of the people, as has the US imperialist force who also called us terrorists.

No such event has before taken place in history, where ‘terrorists’ have been recognised like this. These kind of unimaginable things have happened on the back of the force of the masses. We believe that on the back of the force of the masses, the constitution can also be written, a constitution favourable to the masses, but the possibility of that kind of constitution being written is very low at the moment.

WPRM: Many Maoists around the world are concerned that the party has given up the armed struggle, the PLA are in cantonments and the party now has the plan to merge the two armies together, the PLA and the Nepali Army (NA). What is the role of the PLA now in the struggle for revolution in Nepal?

Com. Binod: The PLA is under the control of UNMIN and a special team, the Army Integration Committee. But practically the PLA is under the control of the Maoist party. Even though the weapons are in containers, the key of those containers is in our hands. We talked to the lower members of the NA and we found that the behaviour within their army is like from the 12th or 14th centuries, feudal behaviour is being carried out. The leadership of the NA is from a very backward class, from feudal leadership. If we do things carefully then there is a big possibility that the bitterness between officers and soldiers could be maximised. Obviously as long as the NA is around, insurrection or victory cannot be achieved. Hence, the question of integration is not that the PLA is being diluted into the NA. The NA should be diluted into the PLA. The meaning of the policy of army integration is not in the dissolution of the PLA but in the dissolution of the NA, to transform the NA and turn it into a PLA. That is why Nepali Congress and UML are always afraid of army integration.

WPRM: Mao said that after 1949 the dangers of sugar-coated bullets are more dangerous than the real bullets from the war before. How does the UCPN(M) understand this?Com. Binod: Certainly this situation is grave, but it is not out of our hands and the situation can be made positive. Why has the situation developed in the world where millions of people worked to establish a socialist state and then again the same people came to power and later removed that state away. Why is that? Why do the same people who were once deeply respected reach the point of denouncing the state? There are still certain citizens who fought for Marxism who are now really afraid of Marxism. While we were talking to youth from Eastern Europe, youth working for human rights organisations, I talked to them and asked why there is no attraction towards Marxism among the masses of Eastern European countries.

Why do British people, where Marx said the first revolution would take place, still support the rejected parliamentary system? Why was the Chinese revolution demolished very easily after the death of Mao Zedong? We have to answer these crucial questions standing on the unprecedented history of the 21st century. We feel we can meet the many challenges put forward in the present world. We will continue developing our understanding, our theory, having in the present given answer to these questions; these crucial questions. Based on dialectical materialism and based on democratic centralism, based on safeguarding participation in state power and control over state power, we can accomplish and meet the challenges of state power and control. Communists believe that the stability of capitalism is in motion. We believe that those who are most scientific are Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. But to some they look dogmatic and unscientific. Those who are most reactionary are capitalist-imperialists, which to them looks more dynamic and more forward-moving. The crucial question is why it looks like that. We have to answer this question.

WPRM: The UCPN(M) has developed a theory of elections taking place after New Democratic Revolution and during the stage of socialism. Can you give us your thoughts about this?Com. Binod: Based on the experiences of Soviet Russia and China, we have understood that the economic and social rights of the masses are not only important, but the political rights of the masses, the personal liberty of the individual, are also very important. With the participation of the masses in state power, state power can go autocratic; state power can become another type. Certainly the dictatorship of the proletariat has to be established and systematised. While we are systematising the dictatorship of the proletariat we should not be cut off from the relationship with the masses. So the dictatorship of the proletariat should be approved directly by the masses.

This does not include pro-feudal, pro-imperialist, pro-expansionist forces, or comprador bureaucrats. It does not include anti-feudal ideologies. Not from those kinds of people, but from people that are really oppressed, those who, if they lose state power, will lose everything. We understand that socialism is an exercise of political ability of the individual to safeguard the dictatorship of the proletariat. That kind of society is, we believe, socialist society. Leninist socialism as defined in the period of Stalin contained something wrong somewhere, so we believe and we hope that we can correct this practice. The control, the observation and the intervention of the masses against the state, has to be guaranteed. In one certain sphere, our correct leadership, our correct party line, cannot mean a direct corridor to revolution. The whole thing has to be tested time and again. Then the instrument of the state is the people, and the people must have the right to test it. That is our definition of socialism as we understand it.

Friday, August 28, 2009

What are the conclusions of the freshly concluded Central Committee meeting? Could you throw some light on that?

Comrade Kiran: We are now a part of the ongoing peace process. Our prime objectives are the conclusion of the peace process with a positive note, to successfully accomplish the task of PLA-Nepal Army merger and drafting of the constitution on time.

In the process of accomplishing the tasks mentioned above, freshly our central committee meeting has decided to expose the moves of the reactionaries who are conspiring to derail the peace process and hinder the constitution drafting process. We will strongly come forward in our struggle to achieve the objectives above and in the process foil the conspiracies of the reactionaries.Similarly, our Central Committee has passed the resolution to find remedies of our internal fallacies, to strengthen our grass root foundation and establish the Maoist party of Nepal as one of the strongest communist party in the country.

In order to accomplish the tasks above we are holding our Party General Assembly after six months (Magh-2066-January-February 2009).Also, we amply discussed our working style and our day to day activities. We have passed 15 Points Code of Conduct to rectify our internal weaknesses and fallacies. Issues such as fiscal transparency in the party, corruption and involvement in illegal trade…such issues were also discussed at the CC meeting.

And, we have decided to take on the task to declare Ethnic or Regional Federal States, establish local state organs, and to achieve these targets we will bring in nationalists, republicans and forward-looking sections within the party, in the main leadership. We have also decided to wage another round of struggle for the complete freedom of the country.

What say you of the fresh remark of the party Chairman Dahal made in the context of growing differences in between the US, India and China and the threat of war in Asia and the ever increasing foreign interference in Nepal?

Comrade Kiran: Look, Comrade Dahal made those remarks while analyzing the present political situation of the country and the possibility of conspiracies being hatched by the foreign power centers in Nepal.What he meant to say was the countrymen need to remain on high alert against the foreign conspiracies. The media had unnecessarily distorted his more or less straight remarks.

Comrade Dahal has already refuted the media report though a press statement.

How badly will the prolonged transitional period impact the peace process?

Comrade Kiran: In fact, the prolongation of the transitional period has already threatened independence of the country. There have cropped up problems in the Republication order itself. In this context our Central Committee has been successful to take decisions in favor of institutionalizing the republican order and unite the entire party foundations. Unity can only solve the impending crisis.

At a time when your party is favoring Ethnic and Regional Federal Model, the Nepali Congress President Girija Koirala has stood against the proposition? And in the mean time former King Gyanendra through national and international media has expressed resentment against the current disorder? What say you?

Comrade Kiran: Such comments are not uncommon as they are being made from the fascist and dictatorial quarters. Peoples’ revolt is not complete until complete national, ethnic, gender and regional freedom is achieved. such comments areagainst the current Lokatantrik order.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

One of the high ranking officers of the Nepal Army has said that the Maoists’ Militia integration into the Nepal Army was an impossible proposition.Addressing a seminar in Kathmandu, Thursday August 27, 2009, Lt. General Pawan Jung Pandey, Chief of the Directorate of the Military Intelligence of the Nepal Army had made these remarks.

“The Nepal Army will not accept the South African model of Army Integration”, said General Pandey adding, “The image of the South African Army is at the lowest because of the integration with the rebels.”Similarly, Retd Lt. General Chitra Bahadur Gurung told point blank that the Nepal Army even do not want to listen to the talk of integration with the maoist militias.Gurung’s fiery remark came in reply to the idea raised by Barsa Man Pun alias Ananta, in-charge of the Maoists’ party Military wing, that Nepal should adopt the South African model to carry out the integration between the State and the rebel armies.

Said Gurung, the entire world was behind Nelson Mandela while the integration process was being carried out there whereas Nepali situation stands at an entirely different plane.

Revealed the Peace Minister, Rakam Chemjong, addressing the program that the government will soon oust the four thousand disqualified militias from the cantonments. Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat told that in case the integration takes place, the country will not get the constitution.The seminar was organized by Nepal Policy Study Center.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

A task force formed by the Unified CPN (Maoist) Central Committee to probe on the lifestyle and involvement in economic activities of its central leaders and heads of sister organisations has received over 200 complaints, five days before the deadline for submitting the complaints ends, Kantipur daily reported.

Maoist cadres and general public have filed complaints against central committee leaders on nepotism, involvement in economic activities, abuse of power, and their lifestyle, among others. Complaints have also been received against some senior leaders including chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

A task force member said, the task force will investigate the complaints and submit its report to the party headquarter within three months.

Monday, August 24, 2009

As so well pointed out by Prof. Jose Maria Sison, chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), Gloria M. Arroyo, de facto president of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) lacks the political will to engage the NDFP in serious peace negotiations.

She allows one group of her subordinates headed by GRP negotiating chairperson Nieves Confesor to posture as working for peace negotiations and the other group of Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, OPAPP Secretary Avelino Razon and other militarists to brazenly sabotage every prospect of resuming the formal talks in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. The flagrant disarray of the two groups makes Arroyo look like someone with a split personality.

Razon is lying when he claims that the NDFP has demanded the removal of impediments on only four political consultants and that the GRP has complied with the JASIG. In fact, the GRP has generated new impediments and has willfully violated the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) despite the GRP announcement of respecting and complying with the JASIG, starting on 17 July, 2009.

The GRP has not fulfilled its commitment in the 15 June agreement to comply with the JASIG, to remove within the month of July the impediments on all NDFP consultants who are detained or are subjects of warrants of arrest and to use the release of Danilo Borjal in 1997 as the model for expeditious release. The 15 June agreement also involved the commitment of the GRP to release the JASIG-protected persons and those ordered released in 2001 and 2004 and to withdraw or recall the false charges against NDFP panelists and consultants.

Razon is blatantly lying when he claims that Elizabeth Principe and Randall Echanis have been released in compliance with the JASIG and the June 15 agreement. Principe was released by virtue of her legal victories in court and the military even tried to block her release. The conditional release of Echanis for six months is a violation of JASIG and not in compliance with it. The sham safe conduct passes issued in the cases of Rafael Baylosis and Vicente Ladlad incriminate and convict them, serve as their death warrant and are a brazen violation of the JASIG.

The GRP is in zero compliance with and in clear violation of the JASIG and 15 June agreement. The NDFP is now therefore proposing that a meeting be held in Oslo within the first week of September between the NDFP and GRP Negotiating Panels and their respective teams of lawyers in order to put in writing the methods for the expeditious removal of GRP-made impediments on the NDFP panelists and consultants, the withdrawal of false charges and the release of detained NDFP consultants, the JASIG-protected persons and those whose release was ordered in 2001 and 2004.

If the results of the proposed meeting will result in a mutually satisfactory written agreement before 5 September, then there will be a good chance of having a two-day preparatory meeting of the panels on more issues and proceeding to the resumption of formal talks. Otherwise the NDFP will decide to wait for the next GRP administration in order to pursue peace negotiations.###

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Thodoris Iliopoulos is a 31-year old defender of freedom who after his arrest in December 2008 he is illegally detented for 8 months now in Koridalos Prison in Athens with fabricated molotov-throwing charges by cops, whereas all other witnesses confirm that he is totally innocent as he was simply taking a short peaceful walk with his friends. He went on hunger strike since 10 July 2009 and he is supported by the whole Greek society and many other people around the world. Until 20 August 2009 the Greek state refused to allow him to be taken care of in a real hospital and instead kept him in the underfunded and under-equipped prison’s ‘hospital’, putting his health at extreme danger.

The fight for his immediate release continues, and more and more Greek organisations express their support day after day. Except from all freedom-defending groups in Greece, other organisations that have paid attention to his case include the ADEDY labour union, the laywers’ bar association of Thessaloniki, the media (such as the Eleftherotypia and Avgi newspapers), but also political parties. The Solidarity Initiative for Thodoris Iliopoulos has released a call-out for international solidarity and a solidarity concert is arranged for Monday 24 August 2009 at 20:00 in Athens, in Thessaloniki and many other cities all over Greece at the same time. In San Francisco (USA) it' s going to be a protest at the same time outside of the Greek council.

CPG-ml calls all workers and youths and every progressive person to take active part in the various mobilisations and actions that are taking place all over the country demanding the immediate release of Thodoris Iliopoulos who is today, 20 August, in his 42nd day of hunger strike at the Koridalos Prison’s hospital (Translator’s note: according to postings on Athens IMC he is now in a public hospital, Attiko, but the struggle for his release continues) with serious danger for permanent damage to his health.

On the face of Thodoris Iliopoulos, with months-long detention (Translator’s note: since December 2008), that was recently extended (Translator’s note: by six months while he was in hunger strike by 10 July 2009), the court authorities and behind them the government and the police repression forces, seek to take revenge for the insurrectionary youth of last-year December. They will get the answer they deserve for from a new more powerful popular and workers struggle and the solidarity movement to the hunger striker.

The solidarity initiative for Thodoris Iliopoulos has released the following call-out. Please translate it and repost it in as many languages as you can. If you do a translation, please post as a comment here or e-mail us. You can find more posts on Thodoris here:http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/tag/thodoros-iliopoulos/

On the day of action, Thodoris will be on the 45th day of his hunger strike; his situation is already critical. The last prisoner of December’s revolt must be freed – now!

SOLIDARITY INITIATIVE FOR THODORIS ILIOPOULOS

CALL-OUT FOR DAY OF ACTION FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THODORIS ILIOPOULOS, ON HUNGER STRIKE SINCE JULY 10

We call all groups in solidarity to co-ordinate their actions – propaganda, info-actions, meetings- aiming at the immediate release of Thodoris. For this reason, we have set Monday, the 24th of August at 8pm as the day and time when we will put together our voices and our power in demanding the immediate release of hunger striker Thodoris Iliopoulos.

As part of this action the Solidarity Initiative for Thodoris Iliopoulos is organising a solidarity concert at the Propylaea in Athens, on Monday 24 August at 8pm.

In the struggle for his defense and his release, our support is Thodoris’ breath.

Comrade Alessandro della Malva: Dear comrades, firstly I would thank you very much for your message of solidarity, on behalf of CARC Party and Association for Proletarian Solidarity (ASP): actually, it has helped us to face bourgeoisie’s repression more strongly. The many messages we got from everywhere in Italy and by organizations and parties from abroad become a weapon we can turn against Italian government, that persecutes workers, migrants and everyone who struggle for building a different society.

1- How did the patrols appear? What was the background that led to such process?

In Italy, these patrols are born within the reactionary mobilization promoted by the bourgeoisie. Concretely, the Minister of Interior Maroni has established them by law with the “security set”. By these measures, the government wants to intervene against immigration that is the source of all evils, according to its propaganda. By these patrols, the bourgeoisie wants to mobilize the most backward parts of the popular masses against the other ones.

2- What is the opinion of democratic organisations in general? How do they evaluate the appearance of the fascist patrols? What is the plan for action in general?

The parties of the bourgeois left and the trade unions linked to them are against the patrols because they are founded upon racist principles of hate and suspicion. Anyway, today the bourgeois Left does not promote the protest against the fascist patrols. They protest only formally. The bourgeois Left considers the fascist patrols as a means of propaganda by the Right wing, that so tries to mobilize and tie to itself the most reactionary part of the country. Today the bourgeois Left do nothing but announcing that it will struggle by legal means for hampering the fascist patrols because they are not constitutional. In some zones (particularly in Northern Italy), some antagonist groups demonstrated against the patrols: these organizations denounce that these patrols are the attempt of the bourgeoisie to resort again to Fascism, as it did in the Twenties of the last century. Where it has been carried out, this kind of popular mobilization prevented the steady development of the fascist patrols and obliged the State to deploy great police forces, for protecting the patrols from being attacked by the people.

3- What is the attitude of your organisation?

The CARC Party denounces the fascist patrols as the attempt by the bourgeoisie to control the territory facing the growing people’s protest against the effects of the general crisis of capitalism. The reactionary mobilization going on with this “security set” is the way out the bourgeoisie is carrying out for saving its power. On the contrary, for us is the field on which we can develop the mobilization of the popular masses, on which we can develop the ideological autonomy from the bourgeoisie: the antifascist proletarian patrol of Massa represents an experience of self-organization of the popular masses, for controlling the territory. The antifascist proletarian patrols comes out from the conception according to which only workers and popular masses’ organizations can find solution to the problems that trouble them. Only these organizations (through a People’s Block Government) can take the direction of the country and carry out those emergency measures requested as the crisis of capitalism is going on.

On the contrary, the measures the bourgeoisie will take will do nothing but driving proletarians to desperation and war. Because of this, the proletarian patrols are mainly “for”. They are for a public order of the popular masses, for people’s security (our enemies are the fascists provokers at the service of the masters, and not the migrants), for defending the conquests of civilization and democracy wrung out during and in the decades before the Antifascist Resistance, for building a People’s Block Government thanks to the people who organizes himself and becomes protagonist.

Secondly, proletarian patrols are “against”: against rehabilitation of Fascism, against government’s reactionary measures.

4- How do you describe people’s patrols? Which methods of struggle did/should they use?

As I told above, people’s patrols are not mainly a means against fascists, against the State that supports them, against the reactionary mobilization of the popular masses that the bourgeoisie promotes as the crisis goes on. They are mainly a way of self-organization of the masses, to create the mass organizations that connecting each other will be able even to rule the country, if they only understand that this is quite possible and necessary, if they want to go towards the solutions of the troubles the crisis creates. They are a means for the revolutionary mobilization of the popular masses, for creating a People’s Block Government, for going toward socialism.

The method of struggle of the people’s patrols consists of mobilizing the masses against fascists (by meetings, demonstrations, rallies, wide spreading leaflets and so on). It consists of denouncing the fascist nature of the patrols instituted by the State, of denouncing the bourgeois institutions that do nothing against the exaltation of Fascism that the Italian Constitution prohibits, of denouncing the fake antifascism of the bourgeois leftist parties.

The people’s patrols may use any legitimate method of struggle even if they are methods the bourgeoisie declared them illegal. This is the principle according to which “what is not legal for the bourgeoisie is legitimate for the masses.”

5- What is the attitude of other political and democratic organisations to the people’s patrols? Are there any other organisations defending the same way of action?

There were two kinds of reaction regarding the first antifascist proletarian patrol at Massa. On one side the majority of the bourgeois Left put fascist and proletarian patrols on the same level. They hide behind the opposition to all “extremes” for not standing on antifascists’ side and to not express solidarity to the comrades hit by repression. On the other side, some leftist parties and many popular committees expressed solidarity and they too said that the way to follow was that of the proletarian patrols. Some popular committee opposed the fascist patrols just from the beginning: so they did in Padua, in the Venetian region, and in Prato, in the Tuscan region.

6- How did the event in July happen? Could you share this experience with us?

The proletarian patrol was announced to mass media already some days before, and this roused a mobilization about the matter, most of all because in Massa it had been organized a fascist patrol called SSS (clearly referred to the Nazi criminals). The proletarian patrol started from the park where CARC Party and ASP held their National Feasts. It was more than a patrol: it was a demonstration of 60/70 people who ran through the main street near the coast. When the demonstration arrived at the bar where usually some notorious local fascists used to meet, there was the police ranked to protect that scum. The fascists, feeling sure that police were protecting them, began to provoke, with fascist songs and Nazi hails, and when comrades approach them, they throw them chairs. The comrades reacted and accused the police to be there just for supporting the provocation. Then the comrades closed the demonstration going back to the park where they started. Nevertheless, fascists continued to provoke, going around near the park, some with sticks. So two comrades came back for seeing what was happening where we found the police ranked one hour and a half before. There they have been held by the political police and by its chief Valentini. The comrades warned the police about fascists’ threatening attitude, but the police did not care of it. On the contrary, they asked the comrades to show their papers (even if they know them very well). The comrades did not do it, as they understood that they were plotting something for hitting us, and called the other comrades for telling what was happening. We arrived quickly protesting for such a fascist behaviour by the police. The result has been four comrades dragged in police headquarters, kicks, and blows by batons.

However, at the headquarters the police realized that it would not be easy at all to keep us quiet: we protested because they did no let enter an ambulance for a comrade blown at the head with a baton and outside as well there were the comrades immediately come for protesting. All night long, the demonstrators stayed out of the headquarters hitting the gate. The police was very troubled by what was happening at Massa and in other cities (Naples and Pistoia). P-CARC and ASP promoted railways blocks in Massa and Naples and a sit-in in Massa asking for liberating the comrades. Seven hours after two comrades were liberated and two stayed under arrest: the mobilization went on and police’s switchboard became clogged by people calling to protest and to ask for news about the arrested.

Within the head quarters, the policemen showed friendship: they realized that outside thing could get worse and that the mobilization could grow.

The mobilization continued the day before at the tribunal. There the judge decided restrictive measures for the two comrades (to sign every day in carabineer’s barracks until the day of the trial fixed on 9 October), but did not dare to confirm the arrest, thanks to the mobilization of the comrades who have been continuously to the attack and turned the repression against the police itself.

7- What kind of mistreatment did you face with under police custody? How was your attitude?

Firstly the police tried to use rough tactics, beating us on the road and trying to frighten us in the barracks, even stopping the aid for the wounded comrade, but when they realized that this could have been used against them they changed their attitude. Ad I told before, in front of us who were in the cell, hearing shouting and slogans by the comrades outside) the attitude was aimed to keep low the level of the clash: many of them told that they were on our side, that they knew we were not criminals. All of them were astonished by the mobilization so quickly aroused.

8- Has there been any change in the state’s policies concerning the fascist patrols?

After the proletarian patrol of Massa there were stands also by members of the Government. Minister Maroni could not withdraw, as its party, the Lega Nord, has fighting migrants and patrols as warhorse, but Bossi, the leader of the Lega, had to justify himself. Berlusconi itself admitted that patrol are an act of mistrust for the Government, the members of the main leftist parties go so far as declaring that the Government is carrying out a wicked politics that creates further tensions, instead of giving security to the citizens. The leftist Major of Massa, who until then had condemned the SSS patrol very softly, decided to stand firmly and established a sanction of 400 Euros to be paid by who organizes patrols.

9- What will be the future of the antifascist struggle? Is this question still on the agenda of democratic forces?

As regards us, we shall use repression as an opportunity for creating mobilization: the trial against the arrested of Massa will be an opportunity to create mobilization. It has to become in the trial against the measures the Government adopted for facing the crisis and for security. We shall bring the Minister Maroni, fascists, and racists of this government in the box of the accused. Our struggle will be a concrete step for developing the self-organization of popular masses, The masse be the protagonist of building a People’s Block Government that will open the way to socialism, the only way out of this rotten system.

The rank and file members of the parties of the bourgeois left sympathize with the experience of the proletarian patrols. Many people by now cannot stand any longer the fake antifascism of the corrupted leaders of their parties: facing the popular antifascism, those leaders unmask their true will and many of them will be obliged to follow us in our field.

Alessandro Della Malva

Secretary of Tuscan Federation for the CARC Party

Party of the committies to Support Resistance-For Communism (CARC)-ItalyVia Tanaro, 7-20128 MilanoTel/Fax 02.26306454e-mail: resistenza@carc.itWebsite: www.carc.it

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Kantipur Report KATHMANDU, Aug 22 - A senior Maoist leader has threatened of capturing the state power if the national unity government under his party’s leadership is not formed. Chief Whip of the Unified CPN (Maoist) Post Bahadur Bogati on Saturday said that the Maoists take over the state power through “third people people's movement” if a national unity government under Maoist leadership is thwarted. He was speaking at a programme in the capital.

Saying other parties earlier spread the rumour about his party preparing to capture the state, Bogati stated the 'state capture', however, could happen now. He accused other parties of conspiring to ostracise the Maoists. He went on to claim that there is no alternative to the Maoist-led unity government for the logical conclusion of peace process. The Maoist chief whip clarified that the struggle programme his party has launched aims at the logical conclusion of peace process, timely statute drafting and institutionlisation of federal democratic republic, rather than getting to the government.

ABC News has revealed Lithuania was one of the Eastern European nations to host a secret CIA prison. A former Soviet state, Lithuania was said to have provided the site in the hopes of improving ties with the United States. A former intelligence official said the CIA held around eight prisoners in Lithuania until the secret prison program was publicly exposed in 2005.

First published on http://mikeely.wordpress.com/“ The 21st August was the anniversary of the murder of George Jackson and this was remembered in London by a demonstration outside the US Embassy by the George Jackson Socialist League.Here is an interview of George Jackson published by KASAMA in his memory.

I’ve always been an internationalist. And a materialist… You will never find a peaceful revolution.”Karen Wald: George, could you comment on your conception of revolution?

George Jackson: The principle contradiction between the oppressor and oppressed can be reduced to the fact that the only way the oppressor can maintain his position is by fostering, nurturing, building contempt for the oppressed. That thing gets out of hand after a while.

It leads to excesses that we see and the excesses are growing within the totalitarian state here. The excesses breed resistance; resistance is growing. The thing grows in a spiral. It can only end one way. The excesses lead to resistance, resistance leads to brutality, the brutality leads to more resistance, and finally the question will be resolved with either the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed, or the end of oppression.

These are the workings of revolution. It grows in spirals, confrontations, and I mean on all levels. The institutions of society have buttressed the establishment, so I mean all levels have to be assaulted.

Wald: How does the prison liberation movement fit into this? Is its importance over-exaggerated or contrived?

Jackson: We don’t have to contrive any…. Look, the particular thing I’m involved in right now, the prison movement was started by Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party. Huey and the rest of the comrades around the country. We’re working with Ericka [Huggins] and Bobby [Seale, chairman of the BPP; at the time they were co-defendants in a murder trial in New Haven, Connecticut, on charges which were subsequently dismissed], the prison movement in general, the movement to prove the to the establishment that the concentration camp technique won’t work on us. We don’t have to contrive any importance to our particular movement.

It’s a very real, very-very real issue and I’m of the opinion that, right along with the student movement, right along with the old. Familiar workers’ movement, the prison movement is central to the process of revolution as a whole.

Wald: Many of the cadres of the revolutionary forces on the outside have been captured and imprisoned. Are you saying that even though they’re in prison, these cadres can still function in a meaningful way for the revolution?

Jackson: Well, we’re all familiar with the function of the prison as an institution serving the needs of the totalitarian state. We’ve got to destroy that function; the function has to be no longer viable, in the end. It’s one of the strongest institutions supporting the totalitarian state. We have to destroy its effectiveness, and that’s what the prison movement is all about. What I’m saying is that they put us in these concentration camps here the same as they put people in tiger cages or “strategic hamlets” in Vietnam.

The idea is to isolate, eliminate, liquidate the dynamic sections of the overall movement, the protagonists of the movement. What we’ve got to do is prove this won’t work. We’ve got to organize our resistance once we’re inside, give them no peace, turn the prison into just another front of the struggle, tear it down from the inside. Understand?

Wald: But can such a battle be won?

Jackson: A good deal of this has to do with our ability to communicate to the people on the street. The nature of the function of the prison within the police state has to be continuously explained, elucidated to the people on the street because we can’t fight alone in here. Oh Yeah, we can fight, but if we’re isolated, if the state is successful in accomplishing that, the results are usually not constructive in terms of proving our point. We fight and we die, but that’s not the point, although it may be admirable from some sort of purely moral point of view. The point is, however, in the face of what we confront, to fight and win. That’s the real objective: not just to make statements, no matter how noble, but to destroy the system that oppresses us. By any means available to us. And to do this, we must be connected, in contact and communication with those in the struggle on the outside. We must be mutually supporting because we’re all in this together. It’s one struggle at base.

Wald: Is the form of struggle you’re talking about here different from those with which we may be more familiar with, those which are occurring in the third world, for example?

Jackson: Not Really. Of course, all struggles are different, depending upon the whole range of particular factors involved.

But many of them have fundamental commonalities which are more important than the differences. We are talking about a guerrilla war in this country. The guerrilla, the new type of warrior who’s developed out of conflicts in the third world countries, doesn’t fight for glory necessarily. The guerrilla fights to win. The guerrilla fights the same kind of fight we do, what’s sometimes called a “poor man’s war.” It’s not a form of war fought with high tech weaponry, or state-of-the-art gadgets. It’s fought with whatever can be had-captured weapons when they can be had, but often antiquated firearms, homemade ordnance, knives, bows and arrows, even slingshots-but mostly through the sheer will of the guerrilla to fight and win, no matter what. Huey [P. Newton] says “The power of the people will overcome the power of the man’s technology,” and we’ve seen this proven true time after time in recent history.

You know, guerrilla war is not simply a matter of tactics and technique. It’s not just questions of hit-and-run or terrorism. It’s a matter of proving to the established order that it simply can’t sustain itself, that there is no possible way for them to win by utilizing the means of force available to them.

We have to prove that wars are won by human beings, and not by mechanical devices. We’ve got to show that in the end they can’t resist us. And we will! We’re going to do it. There’s never going to ever be a moment’s peace for anyone associated with the establishment any place where I’m at, or where any of my comrades are at. But we’re going to need coordination, we’re going to need help. And right now, that help should come in the form of education. It’s critical to teach the people out there how important it is to destroy the function of the prison within the society. That, and to show them in concrete terms that the war is on – right now! – and that in that sense we really aren’t any different than the Vietnamese, or the Cubans, or the Algerians, or any of the other revolutionary peoples of the world.

Wald: In an interview with some imprisoned Tupamaros, urban guerrillas in Uraguay, the question was raised about the decimation of the ranks of Tupamaros; comrades killed or imprisoned by the state. Those interviewed assured me that there were far more people joining the ranks than were being lost to state repression, and that the movement was continuing to grow. Do you feel the same confidence about the Black Panther Party, about the revolutionary movement as a whole in this country?

Jackson: We’re structured in such a way as to allow us to exist and continue to resist despite the losses we’ve absorbed. It was set up that way.

We know the enemy operates under the concept of “kill the head and the body will die.” They target those they see as key leaders. We know this, and we’ve set up safeguards to prevent the strategy from working against us.

I know I could be killed tomorrow, but the struggle would continue, there would be two hundred or three hundred to take my place. As Fred Hampton put it, “You can kill the revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.” Hampton, as you know, was head of the party in Chicago, and was murdered in his sleep by the police in chicago, along with Mark Clark, the party leader from Peoria, Illinois. Their loss is tremendous, but the struggle goes on. Right?

It’s not just a military thing. It’s also an educational thing. The two go hand-in-hand. And it’s also a cyclical thing.

Right now, we are in a peak cycle. There’s tremendous energy out there, directed against the state. It’s not all focused, but it’s there, and it’s building. Maybe this will be sufficient to accomplish what we must accomplish over the fairly short run. We’ll see, and we can certainly hope that this is the case. But perhaps not. We must be prepared to wage a long struggle. If this is the case then we’ll probably see a different cycle, one in which the revolutionary energy of the people seems to have dispersed, run out of steam. But – and this is important- such cycles are deceptive. Things appear to be at low ebb, but actually what’s happening is a period of regroupment, a period in which we step back and learn from the mistakes made during the preceding cycle.

We educate ourselves from our experience, and we educate those around us. And all the while, we develop and perfect our core organization. Then the next time a peak cycle comes around, we are far readier then we were the last time. It’s a combination of military and education, always. Ultimately, we will win. You see?

Wald: Do you see signs of progress on the inside, in prison?

Jackson: Yes, I do. Progress is certainly been made in terms of raising the consciousness of at least some sectors of the prison population. In part, that’s due to the limited victories we’ve achieved over the past few years. They’re token victories perhaps, but things we can and must take advantage of. For example, we’ve struggled hard around the idea of being able to communicate directly with people on the outside. At this point, any person on the street can correspond with any individual inside prison. My suggestion is, now that we have the channels for education secured, at least temporarily, is that people on the outside should begin to bombard the prisons with newspapers, books, journals, clippings, anything of educational value, to help politicize the comrades who are not yet relating. And we, of course, must reciprocate by consistently sending out information concerning what’s really going on in here. Incidentally, interviews like this go a long way in that direction. There should be much more of this sort of thing.

Wald: You disclosed a few months ago that you had been for some time a member of the Black Panther Party. Certainly, the work of the party in this state and elsewhere, the work to free political prisoners, and of course the party’s work within the black community have been factors which influenced your decision. But has the internationalism of the Black Party been one of the key aspects which attracted you to it? And, if this is so, is internationalism meaningful for people in prison, and is it therefore one reason why they’d relate to the party?

Video dedicated to George Jackson Socialist League and Tongogara Otewodros by Democracy and Class Struggle

Jackson: Well, let’s take it a step at a time. Huey came to the joint about a year ago because he’d heard stories about the little thing we had going on already. He talked with us, and checked it out, and he decided to absorb us. Afterwards, he sent me a message and told me that. He just told me that I was part of the Party now, and that our little group was part of the Party as well. And he told me that my present job is to build, or help build, the prison movement. Just like that. Like I said, the objective of our movement is to prove the state can’t seal us off in a concentration camp so I accepted. What else could I do? It was the correct thing. Now, as to your second point, the people inside the joint, the convict class, have related to the ideology of the party 100%.

And we’ve moved from… well, not we, I’ve always been an internationalist. And a materialist. I guess I was a materialist before I was born. I’m presently studying Swahili so that I will be able to converse with the comrades in Africa on their own terms, without having to rely on a colonial language. And I’ve been working on Spanish, which is of course a colonial language, but which is spoken by millions upon millions of comrades in latin America and elsewhere. I plan to study Chinese after that, and possibly Arabic.

When I complete this task, I will be able to speak to something like seventy-five percent of the world’s people in their own tongue or something akin to their own tongue. I think that’s important.

The other brothers here are picking up on it. And there are some, especially those who are already politicized before they came inside, who are on top of it. But like I said, it’s of utmost importance that people outside bombard this place with material which will help prisoners understand the importance of internationalism to their struggle. It’s coming, but it’s still got a way to go before the educational process is complete. Ignorance is a terrible thing and being cut off from the flow of the movement is really detrimental. We must correct the situation as a first priority.

Wald: Can you receive mail and publications from other countries?

Jackson: Mail can be received from anywhere on the globe. I get stuff right now from Germany and England and France as a result of the book being published in these countries. And a few copies of Tricontinental [a Cuban revolutionary journal] have gotten in. They’ve helped broaden the scope, and explained a few things to comrades that they didn’t understand. This is something that really upsets the goons. In years past, every time a black prisoner would achieve and intellectual breakthrough and begin to relate our situation to the situation of the Cubans, say, or the Vietnamese or the Chinese-or anywhere else in the Third World-well these prisoners would be quickly assassinated. Now that’s become a little harder to do. So, I believe the people on the street should just start to flood the prisons with things like Tricontinental.

Wald: Despite a few peaceful victories in Latin America, such as that of Salvador Allende in Chile, many people still believe that armed struggle is the only way most Latin American countries are going to be free. Also, there’ve been some recent victories in the courts for members of the Black Panther Party, Los Siete de la Raza [seven Chicano activists from San Franciscocharged with murder in 1969; they were acquitted], and so on. Do you believe the victories in Chile and in the courts…

Jackson: They were appeasement. Allende… the thing that happened with Allende… look, it was not a “peaceful revolution.” That’s deception.

Allende is a good man, but what’s going on in Chile is just a reflection of the national aspirations of the ruling class. You will never find a peaceful revolution. Nobody surrenders their power without resistance. And until the upper class in Chile is crushed, Allende could at any time be defeated. No revolution can be consolidated under the conditions that prevail in chile. Blood will flow down there. Either Allende will shed it in liquidating the ruling class, or the ruling class will shed his whenever it decides the time is right. Either way, there’s no peaceful revolution.1

Much the same can be said for the court cases you’re talking about. They’re an illusion. Every once in a while the establishment cuts loose of a case-usually one which was so outrageous to begin with that they couldn’t possibly win it without exposing their whole system of injustice anyway-and then they trot around babbling about “proof that the system works,” how just and fair it is. They never mention the fact that the people who were supposed to have received the justice of the system have often already spent months and months in lockup, and have been forced to spend thousands of thousands of dollars, keeping themselves from spending years and years in prison, before being found innocent. All this to defend themselves against charges for which there was no basis to begin with, and the state knew there was no basis. Some system. You get your punishment before your trial in this country if you happen to be black or brown or political. But they use these things to say the system works-which I guess it does, from their perspective-and to build their credibility for the cases that really count, when they really want to railroad someone into a prison cell. The solution isn’t to learn how to play the system for occasional “victories” of this order, although I’ll admit these sometimes have a tactical advantage. Winning comes only in destroying the system itself. We should never be confused on this point.

Wald: but the alternatives sometimes bear dire consequences. This raises the difficult question of the death of your brother, Jonathon, and whether his life may to a certain extent have been wasted.

Jackson: Well, that’s obviously a tough question for me because, emotionally, I very much wish my little brother was alive and well. But as to whether I think Jonathan’s life may have been wasted? No, I don’t. I think the only mistake he made was thinking that all of the 200 pigs who were there would have, you know, some sort of concern for the life of the judge. Of course, they chose to kill the judge, and to risk killing the D.A. and the jurors, in order to get at Jonathan and the others. It may have been a technical error. But I doubt it, because I know Jonathan was very conversant with military ideas, and I’m sure it occurred to him that there was a possibility that at least one pig would shoot, and that if one shot, they’ all shoot, and it’d be a massacre. Judge or no judge. It was all a gigantic bluff, you know? Jonathan took a calculated risk. Some people say that makes him a fool. I say his was the sort of courage that cause men of his age to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in somewhat different settings. The difference is that Jonathan understood very clearly who his real enemy was; the guy who gets the congressional medal usually doesn’t. Now, who’s the fool?Personally, I bear his loss very badly. It’s a great burden upon my soul. But I think it’s imperative – we owe it to him – never to forget why he did what he did. And that was to stand as a symbol in front of the people – in front of me – and say in effect that we have both the capacity and the obligation to stand up, regardless of the consequences. He was saying that if we all stand up, our collective power will destroy the forces that oppose us. Jonathan lived by these principles, he was true to them, he died by them. This is the most honorable thing imaginable. He achieved a certain deserved immortality insofar as he truly had the courage to die on his feet rather than live one moment on his knees. He stood as an example, a beacon to all of us, and I am in awe of him, even though he was my younger brother.

Wald: The news today said that Tom Hayden declared in front of the National Student Association Congress that there will be more actions like the one Jonathon attempted. Do you agree?

Jackson: I’ve been thinking a lot about the situation. I’m not saying that these particular tactics-even when successfully executed-constitute the only valid revolutionary form at this time. Obviously, they don’t. There must also be mass organizing activities, including large-scale nonviolent demonstrations, education of the least developed social sectors, and so on. These things are essential. The revolution must proceed at all levels. But this is precisely what makes the tactics necessary, and far too many self-proclaimed revolutionaries have missed the point on this score. Such tactics as Jonathon employed represent a whole level – an entire dimension — of struggle which has almost always been missing from the so-called American scene. And while it is true that armed struggle in-and-of-itself can never achieve revolution, neither can the various other forms of activity. The covert, armed, guerrilla dimension of the movement fits hand-in-glove with the overt dimension; the two dimensions can and must be seen as inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon; neither dimension can succeed without the other.

Viewing things objectively, we can readily determine that the overt dimension of the movement is relatively well-developed at this time. Over the past dozen years, we’ve seen the creation of a vast mass movement in opposition to the establishment in this country. I won’t go into this in any depth because I’m sure that everyone already knows what I’m talking about. It should be enough to observe that within the past two years, the movement has repeatedly shown itself able to put as many as a million people in the streets at any one time to express their opposition to the imperialist war in Indochina [this seems to be a reference to the November 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, staged in Washington, D.C.]. The covert dimension of the movement is, by comparison, very much retarded at the present time. In part, this may be due to the very nature of the activity at issue: guerrillas always begin in terms of very small numbers of people. But, more to the point, I think the situation is due to there having been a strong resistance to the whole idea of armed struggle on the part of much of the movement’s supposed leadership-particularly the white leadership-up to this point. I hear them arguing-contrary to history, logic, just plain common sense, and everything else -that armed struggle is unnecessary, even “counterproductive.” I hear them arguing in the most stupidly misleading fashion imaginable that the overt dimension of the movement can bring off revolution on its own. This is the sheerest nonsense, and “leaders” who engage in such a babble should be discarded without hesitation.

We may advance a simple rule: the likelihood of significant social change in the United States may be gauged by the extent to which the covert, armed, guerrilla aspect of the struggle is developed and consolidated. If the counterrevolutionaries and fools who parade themselves as leaders while resisting the development of the movement’s armed capacity are overcome-and the struggle is therefore able to proceed in a proper direction-I think we will see a revolutionary change in this country rather shortly. If, on the other hand, this leadership is able to successfully do what amounts to the work of the state- that is to say, to convince most people to shy away from armed struggle, and to isolate those who do undertake to act as guerrillas from the mass of support which should rightly be theirs – then the revolution will be forestalled. We will have a situation here much the same as that in Chile, where the establishment allows a certain quantity of apparent social gains to be achieved, but stands ready to strip these “gains” away whenever it’s convenient. You can mark my words on this: unless a real revolution is attained, all that’s been gained during the struggles of the past decade will be lost during the next ten years. It might not even take that long. [2]

At the present time, I see a number of very hopeful signs – very positive indications- that a true revolutionary force is emerging. Most notably, of course, the direction taken by the Black Panther Party is correct. But there are many other examples I could name. Even in the white community, we have seen the development, or at least the beginnings of the development, of what is necessary with the establishment of the Weatherman organization. We clearly have a long way to go, but it’s happening, and that’s what’s important at the moment. The very fact that Tom Hayden, who is of course a white radical himself, was willing to make the statement he made, and before the audience to which he made it, indicates the truth of this. So, yes, I tend to agree with him and hope we are both correct. Clear enough?

Wald: Yes. Do you see a relationship between what happened at the Marin County Civic Center, between what Jonathan and the other brothers did, and the kinds of things that happen in the Third world, say, in Latin America?

Jackson: Well, of course. Jonathan was a student … he was a military-minded brother. He was a student of Che Guevarra (sic) and Ho, and Giap and Mao, and many others. Tupamaros, Carlos Marighella. He paid close attention to other established guerrillas, other established revolutionary societies, revolutionary cultures around the world. He was very conscious of what was going on in South America and, well, let’s just say that about ninety-nine percent of our conversation was centered on military things. I knew him well. He understood.

Wald: I was going to ask if the Cuban revolutionaries had a significance for you and Jonathan in any concrete ways.

Jackson: Hmmmm … I don’t think it did for Jonathan. But it did for me, because I was in prison. I was just starting my time on this beat right here when Castro, Che and the rest carried the revolution there to a successful conclusion. And the alarm that spread throughout the nation, especially, you know, within the establishment and the police… well, let’s just say that as a newly-made prisoner I enjoyed that a lot. Someone else’s liberation at the establishment’s expense, it was a vicarious boost at a time when I most needed it. And I’ve always felt very tenderly toward the Cuban revolution as a result.

Wald: Then you weren’t an anti-communist when you came into prison?

Jackson: Oh, I’ve never been an anti-communist. I suppose you could say I didn’t have much understanding of communism when I came in, and so I wasn’t pro-communist in any meaningful way. But I was never “anti.”

Wald: But didn’t you initially find it terrible that Cuba had “gone communist”?

Jackson: No-no-no! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m trying to get across that I’ve alays been fundamentally anti-authoritarian. Communism came later. And when the Cuban revolution happened, the very fact that it upset the authorities here so bad made me favor it right off and made me want to investigate it much further. The idea was that if they don’t like it, it must be good. You see? And that’s what led me to seriously study socialism. I owe much of my own consciousness to the Cuban revolution. But that’s me. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to Jonathan. Okay?

Wald: Did the fact that such a tiny country so close to Florida pulled off a successful revolution give you a sense that, “If they can do it, we can do it”?

Jackson: Yes, both then and now. It caused me to consider the myth of invincibility. You know, the idea of U.S. military invincibility was just completely destroyed by the Cuban revolution. The U.S. supported Batista with rockets and planes, everything was needed, and he still lost. He was destroyed by guerrilla warfare, the same thing that’s taking place in Vietnam right now. And the U.S. is losing again. The Viet Cong, I mean they take these gadgets – the best things the best military minds in the western world can produce – they take them and the ball them up and throw them right back in the face of these imperialist fools. Cuba and now Vietnam; these things catch my attention. I try to learn the lessons from other peoples’ successes. Now, in that sense I’m sure the Cuban revolution had significance for Jonathan, too.

Wald: I see our time is almost up. Do you have any last remarks you’d like to make?

Jackson: Yes, I’d like to say POWER TO THE PEOPLE! And I’d like to say that by that I mean all power, not just the token sort of power the establishment is prepared to give us for its own purposes. I’d like to say that the only way we’re ever going to have change is to have the real power necessary to bring the changes we want into being. I’d like to say that the establishment is never going to be persuaded into giving us real power, it’s never going to be tricked into, it’s never going to feel guilty and change its ways.

The only way we’re ever going get the power we need to change things is by taking it, over the open, brutal, physical opposition of the establishment. I’d like to say we must use, as Malcolm X put it, any means necessary to take power. I’d like to say that we really have no alternatives in the matter, and that it’s ridiculous or worse to think that we do. That’s what I’d like to say.

Notes1. Editor’s note: True to Jackson’s prediction, the Chilean military – in combination with the CIA, Kissinger’s State Department, and transnational corporations (notably ITT and anaconda)- brought down the Allende government in September of 1973. More than 30,000 progressives and Allende himself were killed during the coup and the following three years. Many thousands more were driven into permanent exile. The Chilean people have been saddled with the neo-fascist regime of Colonel Augusto Pinochet ever since. Although demonstration elections did take place in 1989, Pinochet still remains in charge of the military.

2. Editor’s note: Actually, it was a bit longer; the Reagan administration of the 80s was required to validate Jackson’s prediction

The Chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal- Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda has made it clear that the main agenda of the party of the ex-rebels was to establish a Peoples’ Republican Order and the State Capture.

“Our priorities set at time of the revolt remains still intact, we have not retracted from our earlier objectives”, declared Prachanda.

Prachanda was addressing a Maoists’ Party gathering in Dharan, Sunsari District, Thursday August 20, 2009.

“Peoples’ Liberation Army is the major force of the Maoists’ Party, the Party cadres should play significant role to further strength this indomitable force”, he declared.

“Our final objectives are to establish the peoples’ republican order and to capture the state”, he said adding, “I urge you all to keep these objectives in your mind and bring about a hurricane through the ongoing peoples’ uprising.”

“The major challenge before us to reach the objectives as mentioned are to defeat a faction of the UML (Oli) and the Nepali Congress”, he categorically said.

“Very soon we will take power”, he said adding “There is no alternative to the Maoists’ led government in Nepal.”

UCPN (Maoist) chairman ( Prachanda) Pushpa Kamal Dahal claimed the state visit by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal to India is a shameful incident in the history of the country.

Dahal, who cited inability of PM Nepal to finalise trade treaty as indicative of Prime Minister’s visit being a failure, also added that it was a failed state visit because Indian media did not give it enough attention.

Meanwhile, the two countries signed the trade treaty after some amendments on Saturday.

Speaking to media persons in Birgunj Saturday morning, former Prime Minister Dahal added Maoist protests in parliament and in streets would continue until other parties agree to discuss the issue of the president’s move in the House.

He said it is a democratic process to debate the issue in the parliament. Dahal also blamed Nepali Congress and CPN (UML) of being stagnant political forces trying to obstruct the progressive changes as proposed by his party

Friday, August 21, 2009

Extract from the Programme of the MLPD - the Marxist Leninist Party of Germany

1. At the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, a new bourgeoisie seized political power in the Soviet Union. It openly propagated ­ modern revisionism and restored capitalism step by step. This state-monopoly capitalism of a new type was the basis for the formation of Soviet social-imperialism. The Soviet Union had served as model and mainstay for the struggle of the proletarians and oppressed peoples of the world for almost forty years. In contrast, Soviet social-imperialism, along with the USA, became a hotbed of worldwide reaction, exploitation and imperialist warmongering.

2. The gradual restoration of capitalism entailed the abrogation of socialist principles. The striving for maximum profit replaced the constantly improving satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of the entire society. The new bourgeoisie had the power of disposal over the most important means of production, banks, trade organizations and means of transport. It claimed a share of profit in accordance with its position in the bureaucracy.

3. With the aid of its lackeys in the other com munist parties, the revisionist leadership of the ­ CPSU forced the GDR and most countries of the former ­ socialist camp into taking the capitalist road and, by transforming the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) into a capitalist institution, led them into neocolonial dependency on the Soviet Union.

4. To deceive the masses of the people, the new bourgeoisie in the former GDR called its system of rule a "workers' and peasants' state." The revisionist SED presented itself as the Marxist-Leninist party of the working class and imposed a pseudo-Marxist-Leninist ideology on the masses of the people, combined with some social improvements. The honest commitment of many people was abused for the big lie of "real socialism." Simultaneously, any beginnings of a democratic or even Marxist-Leninist opposition were mercilessly prosecuted by the State Security Service. A climate of fear of spying and denunciation was created.

5. All over the world, the bourgeois mass media celebrated the economic and political collapse of the former Soviet Union and its neocolonial structure of rule in 1991 as the "end of socialism" and the beginning of a "new world order." In reality, the world observed the decline of one part of the imperialist world system which, until then, was characterized by the rivalry of two superpowers, United States and USSR. The ossified bureaucratic-capitalist relations of production and the concentration of a big part of Soviet economic potential on nuclear buildup led to growing tailism of its economy. Gorbachev's "perestroika" policy aimed at overcoming the Soviet Union's economic trailing behind by making the two capitalist systems gradually converge and interpenetrate. The result was the economic and political collapse.It was an expression of the bankruptcy of modern ­ revisionism and intensifies the general crisis of capitalism.

6. The restoration of capitalism arose from the seizure of power by a degenerated petty-bourgeois bureaucracy which, in a long process, had established itself in the midst of the socialist leadership of the economy, the state and the party. Its material basis lay in the still existing contradictions between capitalist and socialist countries, between manual and mental labor, and between town and country, in the remnants of commodity production, the existence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois family relations, continuance of bourgeois right and, last but not least, in the effects of bourgeois ideology. The petty-bourgeois bureaucracy strives for personal privileges, promotes nepotism and careerism, oppresses honest criticism from the party and the masses, abuses its authority for egoistic motives and distinguishes itself by empty and submissive phrasemongering sounding like Marxism-Leninism.

7. The MLPD appreciates the great efforts of socialist construction in the Soviet Union and the GDR. The merits of the Soviet people in smashing Hitlerite fascism are immortal. After Lenin's early death, Stalin resolutely continued to lead the Soviet Union on the socialist road, against the bitter resistance of internal and external enemies.But in doing so, the necessary ideological struggle against the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking was neglected; the mobilization of the masses against the degenerated petty-bourgeois representatives of bureaucracy was abandoned. These were the two main errors of Stalin. To ensure unencumbered control related mainly to the party's Central Committee, an independent Central Control Commission was set up under Lenin's leadership in 1923. It was an expression of underestimating the danger of capitalist restoration when, under Stalin in 1933, the Central Control Commission lost its independent character.

Instead, the struggle against bureaucratic mismanagement and sabotage was waged one-sidedly with administrative means and by means of the state security which was bureaucratized itself. The bureaucratic-centralist methods of party leadership, the leadership of the economy and the state were not touched. Due to false accusations, even numerous innocent people were executed or sentenced to imprisonment.

8. In the GDR, petty-bourgeois bureaucratism had developed early at the top of the SED. Mistrust in the masses and bureaucratic-centralist methods of leadership increasingly replaced patient persuasive work and democratic centralism.

On June 17, 1953, in more than 270 places all over the GDR, hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike against the rise of the planned production target, bureaucratically ordered from the top. The SED leadership was neither willing nor able to draw real lessons from the just mass criticisms. Instead, the imperialist attempts at abusing this mass movement for anti-socialist goals were used as an occasion to smash it with military means. Thus, the hopeful beginnings of socialist construction were suffocated.

9. The insufficient consolidation of the socialist consciousness of the masses of the working people and the party members, their inadequate revolutionary vigilance and the poorly developed democratic control over the responsible leading persons allowed the entire bureaucracy in the party, state and economy to degenerate into a petty-bourgeois bureaucracy which led the SED onto a revisionist course, and thus became a new type of bourgeoisie.

10. After 1956, the Communist Party of China headed by Mao Zedong took the lead in the struggle against the seizure of power by the modern revisionists. In 1966, Mao Zedong developed the idea of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the highest form of class struggle under socialism. Mao Zedong recognized the decisive barrier against the restoration of capitalism in the ideological and political mobilization of the masses, of millions of workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals and the young generation. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution represents the essential method of struggle against the danger of a revisionist seizure of power, rapidly developing the socialist consciousness of the masses and thus strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The revisionists' seizure of power under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping in the People's Republic of China after Mao Zedong's death in 1976 revised the results of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It introduced the restoration of capitalism in ­ China, too, and led to the formation of Chinese social-imperialism.

11. The international Marxist-Leninist and working-class movement must draw conclusions from the restoration of capitalism, which took place in all former socialist countries without exception. The class struggle between the socialist and the capitalist road determines the development of contradictions also in socialist society over a very long historical period. This struggle is mainly waged as a struggle over the mode of thinking.

. On the contrary, socialism is undermined, eroded and eventually destroyed. Socialism can win only with the proletarian, socialist mode of thinking prevailing. For that, the control of the mode of thinking of the responsible bureaucracy on all levels and the development and consolidation of the proletarian mode of thinking of the masses are decisive.

12. With the failure of the old, aggressive anticommunism, the ruling forces use a new form of bourgeois propaganda, modern anticommunism. This appeared at the moment when it was vital to draw conclusions from the negative experience of capitalist restoration.

Modern anticommunism hypocritically adjusts itself to the spirit of the age, adopts a "critical" standpoint towards capitalist society, and denigrates socialism at the same time. Constantly new dubious and untenable horror stories on the former socialist Soviet Union and Mao Zedong's China are intended to systematically build up anticommunist reservations among the masses against the socialist alternative. Thus, actual errors and assaults which occurred during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution are utilized to falsify its essence and to disparage its objective. This propaganda is demagogically summarized under the bourgeois propaganda terms "Stalinism" and "Maoism."

Usually, "purified" petty-bourgeois former Leftists or ex-members of the ruling classes in the vanquished bureaucratic-capitalist countries are the leading exponents of modern anticommunism, trying to justify their own betrayal. As star witnesses for the alleged failure of socialism, they and their parties are systematically fostered by monopoly capital up to their elevation as wielders of governmental power.

The struggle against modern anticommunism is the core of the Marxist-Leninists' struggle over the mode of thinking of the masses. The teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong and their vivid application to the concrete situation of progressing social reality form the essential foundation for the emergence of a new upsurge of the struggle for socialism.

13. It is not the end of socialism. Rather, the idea of socialism lives among the masses of the peoples all over the world and it will gain new appeal since the general crisis of capitalism teaches each day anew the necessity of socialist society. Socialism is the concentration of the most progressive ideas and achievements of mankind. It is not a preconceived scheme and most definitely not egalitarianism, but emerges from the multifaceted life and struggle of the masses. It is the next social step forward, in which the revolutionary progress of the productive forces is used for the benefit of society as a whole.

Our strategy: the revolutionary protracted people’s war Our strategy, the way for making Italy a new socialist country, is the revolutionary protracted people’s war. This is the conclusion of the balance of the experience of the communist movement, of the struggle of the working class against the imperialist bourgeoisie, in particular during the first wave of the proletarian revolution. By its nature the struggle of the working class against the imperialist bourgeoisie for establishing socialism is a revolutionary protracted people’s war. The communist party has to recognize this reality, understand it through the end and utilize this consciousness for directing the revolution.

At the conclusion of the balance of the experience of the struggles the communist movement carried out against imperialist bourgeoisie in the last 130 years we have to repeat,paraphrasing what Mao said in 1940 regarding the proletarian revolution in China: “For more than hundred years we used to do the revolution without having a clear and right conception of it. We acted blindly: this is the reason of our defeat”.

Mao Tse-tung elaborated in every detail the theory of the revolutionary protracted people’s war. This theory is one of the main contributions of Maoism to communist thought. Mao Tse-tung, however, was referring to the concrete case of the revolution of new democracy in China. So, in its elaboration there are combined the universal laws of revolutionary protracted people’s war valid for every place and time, and the particular laws valid for the revolution carried out in China in the first half of the last century.

So, it needs that every party learns from Maoism the universal laws of the revolutionary protracted people’s war and elaborate the particular laws for its country and time. The question of how the working class would arrive to seize power was clearly posed for the first time by F. Engels in 1895, in its Introduction of the reprint of K. Marx’s articles Class struggles in France from 1848 to 1850.

At the end of the XIX century, at the beginning of the imperialist era of capitalism, in the most advanced countries the social democratic parties had already carried out their historical work to constitute the working class as a class politically autonomous from the other. They had put and end to the era when many people talented or inept, honest or not, attracted by the struggle for political freedom, by the struggle against king, police and priests’ absolute power, did not see the contrast between bourgeoisie and proletariat’s interests.

They did not conceive even for a moment that workers could act as an autonomous social force. The social democratic parties had put an end to the era in which many dreamers, sometimes brilliants, believed that it would be enough to convince the rulers and the ruling classes of injustice and precariousness of existing social order for easily establishing universal peace and welfare on the earth. They dreamed to realize socialism without working class’ struggle against bourgeoisie.

The social democratic parties put an end to the era in which almost all the socialist and in general working class’ friends saw the proletariat only as a social evil and get frightened noticing that with industry development also this evil was developing. So they thought how to restrain industry and proletariat’s development,to stop “the wheel of history”. (131) Thanks to Marx and Engels’ direction, the social democratic parties instead creates in the most advanced countries a political movement, headed by the working class, that placed its fortunes just in proletariat’s growth and in its struggle for establishing socialism and for the socialist transformation of the entire society.

The era of proletarian revolution was beginning.(132) Working class’ political movement was the subjective,superstructural side of the proletarian maturation, while the passage of capitalism to its imperialist phase was its objective and structural side.The working class had already carried out some attempts to seize the power: in France in 1848-50 (133) and in 1871 with the Paris Commune, (134) in Germany with the participation on a large scale in political elections. (135) By then it was possible and necessary to realize how the working class would succeed to seize the power and start the socialist transformation of society. The conditions for facing the problem of the form of the proletarian revolution were gathered.

In the Introduction of 1885 F. Engels draw the balance of the experiences till then carried out by he working class and clearly expressed the thesis according to which “ the proletarian revolution has not the form of an insurrection of the popular masses that overthrows the existing government, during which the communists, participating in it with the other parties, seize the power”.The proletarian revolution has the form of a gradual accumulation of the forces around the communist party,until reversing the relation of force: the working class has to prepare until a certain point “already within the bourgeois society instruments and conditions of its power”. Marx already explained that it was an illusion to believe to be able to establish a new social order taking possession of the bourgeois State and using it for carrying out that work. Engels added that was an illusion to believe to succeed in taking possession of the bourgeois State winning the elections: as this possibility was near to be realized, the bourgeoisie itself would have broken its legality.

So the communist party had to work already then taking account of this sure event, had to prepare the masses to face it, to take advantage from it for definitively reckoning with the bourgeoisie. adventurists, opportunists, reformists and movementists joined this point: they did not take in account already then that sure event, deterred the masses for preparing already then to it. The development of revolution in the latest century confirmed, specified and enriched all these theses of F. Engels. (136) Opposing to Engels’ thesis according to which the working class can get the seizure of power only through a gradual accumulation of the revolutionary forces, some comrades present the Russian revolution of 1917 as a popular insurrection (“assault to the Winter Palace”) begun by the Party on 7th November 1917 during which the bolshevists seized the power. As a matter of fact the establishment of Soviet government in November 1917 had been preceded by a systematic work aimed to accumulate revolutionary forces around the communist party.

Starting from 1905, this constituted itself as a free political force, existing and operating with continuity in view of seizing power, despite the Czarist wanted to destroy it, and so as a force the enemy was not able to destroy. So, the struggle carried out by the communist party from 1903 to 1917 can teach us something about how accumulating the revolutionary forces within the society dominated by the enemy, on condition to take in account in the right measure that Czarist Russia was an imperialist country but still semi feudal, that the revolution to be done was a revolution of new democracy, that in Russia did not yet exist a regime of preventive counter-revolution.The establishment of Soviet government in November 1917 was preceded by the more specific work done from February to October 1917 in conditions of double power, of equilibrium between the two opposed fields,when the revolution already commanded military forces obeying only to the Soviets.

It was followed by a civil war that had also to face the imperialist aggression that lasted three years until the end of 1920. As a matter of fact it ended only in a certain sense: in fact, considering the matter on the international level, not from the point of view of the revolution in Russia but from that of the world proletarian revolution, the effort of the imperialist bourgeoisie for suppressing the Soviet Union (become the red base of world proletarian revolution)went on with the long and many anti Soviet manoeuvres of the Twenties and Thirties and with the Nazi aggression in 1941-1945. (137)80

In reality the history of Russian revolution is a brilliant confirmation of Engels’ thesis, the more brilliant because in this case the revolutionary popular war was successfully carried out without having elaborated its theory before. If we consider the course of revolutions followed one another since then in single countries and also the course of the revolution on a world level we see that the theory of the Protracted Revolutionary People’s War comes out confirmed, both when revolution has been carried out until the establishment of the new power and also when it has been defeated. By the light of the theory of the Protracted Revolutionary People’s War, in fact, also the reason of the defeats the communist movement of imperialist countries underwent becomes clear. (138) The experience confirmed that the popular insurrection, in determinate circumstances,is a useful and necessary manoeuvre within a war. But when it is assumed as a strategy of revolution, the communist are necessarily obliged to oscillate between adventurism and inertia.

The theory of the Protracted Revolutionary People’s War indicates the course the communist movement has to do for overthrow the existing power and establish the working class’ power. This theory is an experimental science: it has been constructed elaborating the experience of the struggle carried out till now by the communist movement and it is verified and confirmed in the results the communist movement gets applying it in the class struggle. It is the synthesis of the experience carried out, translated in indications, criteria,lines, methods and rules for the revolution we have still to do. It is an open science, in the sense that it is going to be enriched, specified, and developed as the proletarian revolution advances in the world. It is a science that includes general principles and laws, valid in every country and time, and particular principles and laws that reflect the particularity of every country.

First of all the socialist revolution is a unitary process.The types of struggle composing this process and the episodes through which it develops are thousands, but they compose only one process. Every one of them every episode and in every particular field and through which evaluate the result of our action. For directing in a right way the entire process and in every single passage and component, we have to understand the connection among all the various kinds of struggle and episodes, we have to direct everyone of them taking in due account its universal and its particular character and using the particular to realize the universal. We have to understand how a phase prepares and generates the next one. To direct the struggle in a right way in a stage means to make it generate the next stage. We need to take in account the tie connecting all clashes and events one another; we need to take in account that every event generates another, that the qualitative result is generated by the quantitative accumulation.

Every particular struggle must contribute to realize the final victory: concretely, it must contribute to widen the struggle, to take it at a higher level, to develop new forces, to open new struggle front, and to strengthen the forces that carried it out. Every phase has to prepare the ground and the forces for the next. On the other side in order to lead a clash to victory, we have to carefully take in account of the greater number possible of its particular aspects.

So the communist party must have a plan that includes all the aspects of popular masses’ struggle and the whole process of socialist revolution, until the establishment of socialism. The opportunists oppose systematically the elaboration of a plan. They scream against the “theoretical plan”. They play by ear, do “what is possible to do” from time to time, avail themselves of the circumstances. So they feel good with the spontaneists. The both personifies the characters of the most backward strata of our movement, acting spontaneously, they lay down on it. We want to elaborate and realize a plan, for leading in the right way every spontaneous movement for making it develop and reach a superior level, for strengthening the positive and fighting the negative trend in every spontaneous movement. Only the strategic plan allows to understand which is the positive and which the negative tendency. Surely it is not an arbitrary plan. It as to be a well founded conception and a clear line of action: a historical prospect scientifically build, with scrupulous seriousness, founding on all the past course of things the aims to get in the future and that we propose to the popular masses because they are aims they need and they have to consciously get. It implies a method consisting of evaluating the outcomes of past struggles for defining precisely the aims of future ones. On the other side the party has to have a method of action and knowledge that allows it to lead successfully every single step and clash, in every field and ground. The struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie does not go on at random. As every process it has its laws. The party has to discover, understand,apply them in every struggle field and ground, step-bystep, phase after phase.

In the modern society, in the last resort the power is the direction of the practical activity of the popular masses. The direction combines the conquest of heart and mind of the popular masses with the exercise of coercion and of organization of everyday life in all his aspects. The essence of the Protracted Revolutionary People’s War consists of constituting the communist party as centre of the new popular power of the working class; in the growing mobilization and aggregation of all the revolutionary forces around the communist party; in the elevation of the level of the revolutionary forces; in their utilization according to a plan for developing a succession of initiatives that put the class conflict at the centre of country political life so that to recruit new forces, to weaken imperialist bourgeoisie’s power and to strengthen the new power, until turning the relations of force upside down, eliminate the State of imperialist bourgeoisie and establish the State of proletariat’s dictatorship.

The communist party is the propelling centre of the new power. Since its foundation, it sets itself as a power autonomous from that of bourgeoisie and in competition with it. Its expansion and strengthening go in parallel with the reduction and weakening of bourgeoisie’s power. The bourgeoisie tries to stifle the new power, eliminating the communist party or corrupting it till it is transformed in a party “like the others”, a bourgeois party. The simple resistance, continuing to exist, without be stifled or corrupted, is already a victory for the party, the first victory of the new power.The growth and strengthening of the new power, from its birth to its victory, passes through three great phases

1. Strategically, the first phase is defensive (the strategic defensive). The superiority of the bourgeoisie is overwhelming. The party has to accumulate the revolutionary forces. It has to gather the revolutionary forces around itself (in the mass organizations and in the front) and within itself (in the party organizations), extend its presence and influence, educate the revolutionary forces to the struggle leading them to struggle. The progression of the new power is measured by the quantity of revolutionary forces gathered in the front and by their level. In this phase the main aim is not the elimination of the enemy forces, but to extend influence and direction of the communist party, gather revolutionary forces among the popular masses, elevate their level, that is to strengthen their consciousness and organization, to make them able to fight, to make their struggle against bourgeoisie more effective, to elevate their level of pugnacity.

2. The second phase is that of strategic equilibrium. The contrast between the revolutionary forces gathered around the communist party and the bourgeoisie has gone so far as the class struggle becomes civil war and the new power forms its own armed forces opposed to those of the bourgeoisie, militarily organizing part of the popular masses and through the passage to revolution by part of enemy armed forces. The first phase generates the second. Without preventive accumulation of the revolutionary forces there is no second phase. In the history of the communist movement we even saw bourgeois States dissolve (Germany, Austria and Hungary in 1918, Italy in 1943, Germany in 1945) without the communist movement passing to the second phase because of it. In the history of communist movement we saw the passage from the first to the second phase occurring in many ways. In some cases the bourgeoisie was no more able to bear the situation created by the new power and so broke its own legality and entered the field of civil war. The case of Spain in 1936 is classic. It could have been also the case of Indonesia in1964 and Chile in 1973 if the communist movement wouldn’t yet be corroded by modern revisionists and by their conception and politics of “peaceful transition”. In other cases it was the communist movement that took the initiative to lead the class struggle on the around of civil war.

It is the case of Russia in 1905 and Italy in the Seventies. In other cases the passages occurred during a general war. It is the case of the coup d’etat of February 1917 in Russia, of the revolution of 1918 in Germany, Austria and many other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, of the Resistance of 1940 in France and the Resistance of 1943 in Italy. This passage could be occurred in other cases if the communist movement wouldn’t had shamefully withdrawn, because it was not prepared to the clash, facing the challenge, the threats and the blackmail of the bourgeoisie of entering the ground of civil war: in 1914 in many European countries, in the Red Biennium in Italy (1919-1920), in 1936 in France, etc. Once its own armed forces are formed, the new power has to succeed in keeping them on the battleground and strengthen them, against the furious attack of the bourgeoisie. To prevent their fast destruction is already a victory. This is what the communist movement realized, considering the things by the point of view of the world revolution, with the defeat of imperialist aggression to Soviet Russia in 1920 and then again in 1945. The strategic aim in this phase is to prevent the destruction of our own armed forces, to succeed in getting them continuing to rule, anyway, conquering this victory is more a political matter (to prevent the bourgeoisie from completely disposing its forces and asserting its military superiority) than a military matter in the strict sense.

3. The third phase is that of strategic offensive. The new power is by then able to launch its forces an attack, both in strictly military terms, and in general political terms, for destroying the enemy forces. The progression of the revolution is measured by how many enemy forces, military in a sense strict and politic in general, it eliminates or dissolves. The strategic aim in this phase is the establishment of the new power in all the country. Its realization ends this phase of the Protracted Revolutionary People’s War and ends the war itself. So, the whole process sets up as a war: it is directed towards and concludes with the elimination of the State of bourgeoisie through an armed clash, because the armed forces are the protection of last resort of its power.A popular war: because its core is the mobilization and organization of the popular masses around the communist party, it is fought by the popular masses and can be finally won only by the popular masses.

A revolutionary war: because of its aim (to establish the power of the working class and to open the way for building a new social order), because of its nature (it is not the conflict among States and opposed armed forces, but between an oppressed class that gradually assumes the direction of the popular masses, conquers their heart and mind and builds its new power against a class of oppressors that already has its State and its armed forces and has inherited from history the hegemony upon the popular masses), because of its method (the revolutionaryclass has the initiative and through its initiative obliges the ruling class to enter the field of struggle more favourable to the oppressed class).

It is a protracted war because in any case, carrying out the whole process above indicated requests a time that cannot be established a priori. In order to win, it needs to be disposed to fight for all the time that will be necessary, to organize and direct our own forces according to this imperative, to manoeuvre. Wanting to end the war in a short time at all costs is lethal for the working class; it leads to defeat and surrender. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie tries desperately to close it in a short time, because the more the war prolongs, the more its victory becomes difficult. Not to succeed in stifling the revolutionary popular war in a short time is already a defeat for the bourgeoisie.The process of socialist revolution has its laws and develops along a certain time. We communists have a limited knowledge of it and so we think it is a complex process. As we gradually learn to carry this process out with success we shall see it simpler. So, we need time.The working class will surely win. Who says that the working class cannot win, overthrow the imperialist bourgeoisie and size the power is wrong (pessimists and opportunists are wrong). The successes got by the communist movement during the first wave of proletarian revolution (1900-1950) practically confirmed what Marx and Engel theoretically deduced by the analysis of the bourgeois society.

Who says that the working class can win, overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize the power easily and in a short time is wrong (the adventurists are wrong: in Italy we have seen subjectivists and militarists at work). The defeats the communist movement underwent during the first wave of proletarian revolution (firstly in the Red Biennium in 1919-1920 and after the victories of Resistance in the Forties), the ruins produced by modern revisionism after it took the direction of the communist movement in the Fifties and the defeat the Red Brigades underwent at the beginning of the Eighties practically confirms this thesis as well. The working class can win, overthrow the imperialist bourgeoisie and seize the power, but through a long period of apprenticeship, hard and most various struggles and accumulation of every kind of revolutionary forces, in the course of the process of civil and imperialist wars that during the general crisis of capitalism upset the world until they transform it.

For carrying out successfully this struggle and reducing the mistakes done, it needs to understand the nature of the process, the contradictions determining it and the laws of its development. Not by choice of us communists, but because of the proper characteristics of capitalism, the process of development of capitalism has set itself on these terms: or wars among parts of the popular masses directed by imperialist groups (wars among imperialist groups and States) or wars of the popular masses directed by the working class against the imperialist bourgeoisie.

It is a matter of fact, and we cannot avoid it by means of our desires or will but putting an end to imperialist era. (139) It is a fact more cleared by the study of the more than hundred years of imperialist era already past and by the study of present trends of society. The situation is made even more complex by the fact that in its war against imperialist bourgeoisie the working class has to take advantage from the contradictions among imperialist groups. In substance, both the two kinds of war (the war of the working class against the imperialist bourgeoisie and the wars among imperialist groups) develop and interlace. (140) Which will prevail is the point at issue. The communists have to do so that the antagonists in war, the two poles of the fields facing one another,are the working class and the imperialist bourgeoisie. With their initiative, manoeuvring the forces they already have, they have to make the classes’ struggle become the core of the political conflict. Only so the working class will succeed in imposing itself as new ruling class at the end of the clash, as the class that won the war. On the other side they have to carry on the war so that the imperialist groups come to blows among themselves and not unite and concentrate their forces, at the beginning prevailing, against the working class. This is a problem of the relation between strategy and tactics in proletarian revolution.

In order to direct a protracted revolutionary people’s war, with less defeats, losses, suffering for the popular masses, it is essential that the party is conscious of the strategy is carrying out and learns from its experience.

To have a right strategy is the first condition for a sure victory. There is no sense in talking about tactics, about the rightness of single tactical manoeuvres and operations, if the party has no strategy. Once it has a right strategy, the party has to combine the absolute strategic firmness with the greatest tactical flexibility. The experience demonstrated that if the party gets this condition, the bourgeoisie unlikely succeeds to defeat the proletarian revolution